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*½/**** Image B Sound B Extras B starring Jennifer Morrison, Matthew Davis, Hart Bochner, Joseph Lawrence screenplay by Paul Harris Boardman & Scott Derrickson directed by John Ottman
by Bill Chambers The absent piece of biographical info in John Ottman’s “talent file” on Columbia TriStar’s DVD release of his directorial debut, Urban Legends: Final Cut, is that the USC vet actually attended film school in a fairytale world of limited oversight and unlimited resources. This quasi-sequel to Urban Legend-minus-the-“s” is perhaps the least conscientious of modern slasher flicks by virtue of setting up myriad Spielberg wannabes for disappointment. It’s (just barely) amusing in that regard to people like myself who consider themselves “in the know,” but misleading to cineaste undergrads and the people who already hate them on principle.
Urban Legends: Final Cut unfolds at the fictitious Alpine University, where various students are vying for the prestigious (and lucrative) Hitchcock Award, a made-up prize that, like everything else about the film, caters to ignorant viewers: For starters, these things are normally named after the people donating the money or in honour of someone esteemed from the fringes of the vocation–a curator, an exhibitor, a party-thrower. Worse, its winner is not expected to have helmed a thriller, namesake be damned–“Hitchcock” probably read “insert instantly recognizable name here” in Paul Harris Boardman and Scott Derrickson’s screenplay. But I digress.
Newcomer Jennifer Morrison is Amy, our strong-willed heroine, who’s learning about set hierarchy as she readies for competition a 16mm short based on the events of Urban Legend, which, in the world of Urban Legends: Final Cut, have themselves become campfire gossip. (Worry not, the self-reflexivity is nowhere near as trying as that of Blair Witch 2.) Her male crew condescends to her, while a hotheaded peer (played by Anson Mount), whose project is also a horror movie, accuses her, in sexist tones, of “stealing [his] genre.” This is actually a rare show of plausibility in the film, and not to worry: soon all of these misogynist pigs are dead. Did it occur to anyone involved in the production to seize on this gamine mix of Julia Stiles and Kirsten Dunst as a potential suspect? That’s a twist that would’ve come loaded with stronger implications about industry politics than what’s presented in the final minutes of Urban Legends: Final Cut.
In lieu, Bryan Singer’s erstwhile editor-composer Ottman concentrates on giving the killer a franchise identity–probably not a great sign that they’re still setting the table in the second go-round, though it’s worth noting that Friday the 13th‘s Jason Voorhees didn’t don his iconic hockey mask until the third instalment–and conjuring false scares. None of it entertained me, which I suppose is just my opinion as a guy who appreciates it when horror movies try to one-up what came before instead of going through the motions, and in terms of mise-en-scène, none of it is even tethered to reality enough to qualify as satire. That’s something I know from experience. In a world where Kevin Smith got rich making a movie about being a clerk without ignoring the idiosyncrasies of the job, why do the characters in Urban Legends: Final Cut act as if they’re jaded Hollywood pros instead of students navigating their own ecosystem? Where are the pretentious experimental types? Why aren’t they talking about money or complaining about the equipment? Why is everybody so good-looking?
You’ll have to take me on faith that this film could’ve differentiated itself amongst campus-set slashers the way the sorority ones do or the sports ones do while also giving the kind of definition to its victims that separates the mediocre examples of the genre from the fondly-remembered ones. I cringed during a scene in which the clapper announced take 29, an inflated number that stresses a stock bimbo’s inability to scream without flubbing it. The reality shreds the gag (lifted from Brian De Palma’s Blow Out, I might add): celluloid is expensive; no student could afford to shoot with such Kubrickian abandon. (In fact both Amy and Joey “Whoa!” Lawrence’s Graham are the offspring of renowned directors, and I find it difficult to believe that one or both of them isn’t just cashing in on nepotism in the real world.) It’s a vain effort to paint Amy as a perfectionist when in fact her script seems of Ed Wood calibre, but even that would be a tantalizing thread in the right hands. Urban Legends: Final Cut opens with a woman getting her kidney stolen (the old wake-up-in-a-tub-full-of-ice gag) before being decapitated, which is the movie in a nutshell: the details simply don’t matter.
THE DVD
Columbia TriStar has released Urban Legends: Final Cut in a reasonably special DVD edition. Complementing sharp but compressed-looking 2.35:1 anamorphic and reformatted fullscreen versions (the film was shot in Super35 and the disc is a flipper) is bubbly commentary from Ottman, who right away dispels the urban legend that Mount’s tyrannical character is based on Bryan Singer and goes on to speak openly of issues he had with studio execs, with Ottman always gunning for a more cerebral picture. That frankness extends to his optional musings over seven deleted bits of business; lest boys of all ages–like me!–get their hopes up, the requisite “shower scene” shown here only teases at showing nudity, thus continuing a trend of Nineties teen flicks.
A four-minute gag reel full of you-had-to-be-there humour, trailers for Urban Legend, Urban Legends: Final Cut, and the two I Know What You Did Last Summers (all in Dolby Digital 5.1), plus weblinks and the aforementioned talent files finish off this disc. Audio for the film itself is also in DD 5.1 and I expected more from it: bass is all but mute, and the big jolts are missing, uh, the jolt. Ambient sound is relegated to the front main speakers. Oh well, this is ultimately the least of Urban Legends: Final Cut‘s problems.
99 minutes; R; 2.35:1 (16×9-enhanced), 1.33:1; English DD 5.1, English Dolby Surround, French Dolby Surround; CC; English, French subtitles; DVD-10; Region One; Columbia TriStar
